Detective Comics Vol 1 590

"An American Batman in London": Two Muslim gunmen invade a Vietnam veterans' club and open fire, killing seven and wounding thirteen, before committing suicide via cyanide pills. Batman, who had been foiling a mugging nearby, holds himself responsible for not stopping

Synopsis for "An American Batman in London"

Two Muslim gunmen invade a Vietnam veterans' club and open fire, killing seven and wounding thirteen, before committing suicide via cyanide pills. Batman, who had been foiling a mugging nearby, holds himself responsible for not stopping the gunmen and is enraged when he learns the man behind the attack, Abu Hassan, is protected by diplomatic immunity. Upon learning that Hassan has left for London, Batman flies to England as Bruce Wayne, seeking to avenge the dead veterans.

Batman arrives in London on Guy Fawkes Night sans utility belt, deemed too risky to smuggle past customs. Nevertheless, he successfully invades England's Syraqi embassy and confronts Abu Hassan, who remains unrepentant and insists his terrorism is a just response to Western imperialism. In the ensuing fight, Abu Hassan is knocked out of a window and impaled on the embassy's barbed-wire fence, but not before revealing to Batman that he has suicide bombers in London ready to destroy the Houses of Parliament.

When the police refuse to take his warnings seriously, Batman is forced to hijack a car and drive to Westminster Palace himself. There, he rams the car into Abu Hassan's agents, setting off the bomb prematurely and killing no one but the would-be bombers. A badly wounded Batman then returns to Bruce Wayne's hotel suite and throws his costume into a street bonfire, knowing he cannot risk London's authorities finding it.

As he watches his costume burn alongside an effigy of Guy Fawkes, Bruce grimly wonders if there had not been some truth to Abu Hassan's condemnation of the West, after all.

Notes

Trivia

Abu Hassan and his London agents use quotations from Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as a password. In particular, they quote Quatrain LXXXVIII, a verse particularly suited to a suicide bombing.

A painting of a hammer and sickle is seen in Abu Hassan's room at the Syraqi embassy, suggesting Syraq to be a nation with strong Communist influences.